The Black Tattoo

  "Well, that isn't the way to go about it."

  The silence between them then lasted for a long time. At last, Charlie's smile went hollow — and faded.

  "Fine," he said suddenly. He looked up and shrugged. "Fine. Well... bye, then."

  He turned, Already the double doors were opening to receive him.

  "Charlie?"

  He didn't answer.

  "Charlie! Wait!" she called.

  But the doors clicked shut. He hadn't looked back.

  Esme was still staring when a loud, ugly buzz from the intercom broke the silence. She went over to the door and pressed the button. "Yeah?"

  "It's me," said Raymond. "Can you come down here and give me a hand a second?"

  "What is it?"

  "I've found Felix."

  * * * * *

  Raymond had only really wanted Esme to talk to: even with Felix's unconscious body over his shoulder in a fireman's lift, he still climbed the stairs to the headquarters two at a time.

  "He was in a private clinic out in the suburbs," he explained. "He was checked in there by his housekeeper two days ago; that's why we couldn't find him till now."

  "is he...?"

  "Dead?" asked Raymond. "No. It's the Scourge's doing, that's for sure, but it's some sort of coma, like — blimey," he added as Esme opened the doors to the butterfly room and he caught sight of the scene beyond.

  "Yeah," said Esme grimly. While Raymond laid Felix on the table, she quickly told him what had just taken place.

  "But how?" Raymond asked. "I mean, I don't think even Nick had that much power."

  Esme was pacing the floor. "What worries me is the way Charlie was afterwards," she said. "The way he left seemed awfully, I don’t know... final." But then, noticing Raymond's look of dawning horror, she stopped. "What?" she asked.

  For another moment, Raymond just stood there by Felix's unconscious body, frozen by what had just occurred to him.

  "Esme," he said — and gulped. "I've never seen anything like this." He gestured woodenly at the remains of the butterflies. "I mean, bringing things to life! Nobody in the Brotherhood's ever done anything remotely like this. Ever!"

  "So?"

  "Well, what if...?" Raymond began — and fell silent.

  Esme stared at him. "Wait a second," she said, "let me get this straight. Jessica wasn't the host, and neither was Felix — not if he's been in a coma for two days."

  "Right."

  "But the only other person who the host could have been is—"

  "Nick!" Raymond finished for her.

  "What about the test, though?" Esme asked. "Choosing a new leader?"

  Raymond shook his head. "Nick wasn't looking for a new leader. He wasn't even looking for new recruits: the Scourge was controlling him! What it wanted was a new host! " He paused. "And it found one."

  They looked at each other.

  "Oh, no..." Esme whispered.

  SORRY'S NOT GOOD ENOUGH

  It was the same night: it was stiflingly hot, and Jack was having bad dreams when the knocking sound got loud enough to wake him. He sat up in bed suddenly. Still wrapped up in his dreams, it took him a while to realize that the knocking wasn't in his head, it was coming from the window.

  Jacks curtains were thin. Normally, the orange of the streetlight outside came through them quite strongly. At that moment, however, a large black shadow was blotting out most of the light.

  Jack got up and pulled the curtains open. Jack's room was three floors up off the ground, but there, waiting outside as if he were standing on solid ground, was Charlie.

  He was smiling. His arms were out at his sides; ink-black tattoo shapes were dripping down them, coiling restlessly under his skin.

  Jack opened the window. "Charlie, what the hell are you doing here?"

  Charlie just smiled. "Nice to see you too," he said.

  "What time is it?" asked Jack. When Charlie didn't answer, he looked back at the glowing red digits of the clock on his bedside table.

  "Jesus, Charlie! It's four in the morning!"

  "Yeah?" said Charlie. "I didn't check. You were certainly out for the count."

  "Yeah, well, that's because it's four in the morning," Jack repeated, since the information clearly hadn't gotten through the first time.

  "Jack," said Charlie, "we've got to go somewhere."

  Jack looked at him. "What?"

  "You and me," said Charlie. "You see, I've just had the most amazing idea. But I want you to come with me."

  "Come with you where?"

  "To the demon world," said Charlie. "I want you to come with me to Hell."

  There was a pause.

  Jack looked at Charlie carefully for a moment. Then he put both hands on the windowsill and leaned forward, looking out and down. Charlie slid back in the air a few inches to make room. Jack looked past his friend's feet, at the ground below, then he looked up at him again.

  "You're steady as a rock," he said. "Getting pretty good at this flying thing now, eh?"

  "Jack," said Charlie, "help me on this. I don't want to do it alone."

  "Do what?"

  "Open the Fracture."

  "Ah," said Jack.

  "Raymond'll never let me do anything," Charlie spat. "And Esme..." His expression turned hurt and puzzled looking. "Well, I don't think me and her are going to get on, man. That's all."

  "What are you talking about, Charlie?"

  "A real adventure," said Charlie. "Don't you see?"

  His eyes took on a weird gleaming quality that Jack didn't like one bit.

  "You and me," said Charlie, "we don't need the Brotherhood. We're better at fighting demons than they ever were. And now we've got the chance to go somewhere no one else's ever been. So how about it? What do you say?" Charlie had got so excited that he'd actually started bobbing slightly in the air. Now, however, as he leaned forward for Jack's answer, the bobbing subsided until he hung still once more.

  Jack looked at him.

  "Give me a minute," he said. "I'll get some trousers on."

  Jack changed out of his pajamas quickly. He was thinking quickly too, and his thoughts went something like this:

  There was no point in saying no. That was obvious. Whatever Charlie was intending to do, he was almost certainly still going to do it whether Jack came with him or not. But if Jack did go with him, then there might be a chance to warn the others or stop him somehow before it was too late.

  In moments, he was ready. He was dressed lightly: black jeans, black T-shirt, and his favorite trainers. In his back pocket, he had his phone, with Esme and Raymond's number already programmed into it.

  "Okay," he told Charlie. "I'll meet you outside."

  Charlie shook his head. "No good mate," he said. "Your folks are downstairs, asleep in front of the TV screen, their heads lolling. He almost smiled. They'd be snoring. They'd be stiff in the morning too: his dad was always particularly bad when they'd spent the night on the sofa.

  Should he tell them he was going? Yeah, right, he thought: what would he say? Besides, if he managed to warn Esme and Raymond in time, then maybe he'd be back in his bed before his folks even woke up. But Jack sighed: somewhere in his heart, he knew already that probably wasn't how the night was going to end up. Not with his luck.

  Typical.

  Grimly, he swung his legs up onto the windowsill, took hold of Charlie's hands, and stepped out into thin air.

  "Let's go," said Charlie.

  "All right," said Jack. And they were off.

  Jack's home, his street, shrank below his feet and vanished into the night. There was a rush of hot air, a sensation like huge black wings closing around them both — then they were stepping out of the shadows onto Charing Cross Road, in London's West End.

  From the front, the Light of the Moon looked a bit like a cinema. The entrance was a sort of wide stone porch, supported by three fairly ridiculous-looking cream-colored pillars. The doors themselves consisted of six panels of thick sheet glass, with large a
nd ugly vertical brass handles stuck onto them. The darkness beyond the glass was total: everyone who worked or drank there was long gone — but the street itself still had a few stragglers passing by. The boys waited until no one was looking. Charlie put his hand on one of the heavy locks, Jack heard a soft click, then Charlie was pushing through into the dark, empty space of the pub that was a gateway to Hell.

  Jack sighed and — a little unsteadily — followed Charlie in. The light from the street quickly shrank into the enveloping darkness of the empty pub. The sensation that they weren't supposed to be there was, Jack found, very strong.

  "Charlie?" he asked, in that ridiculous hoarse whisper you use when you want to be heard but don’t at the same time.

  "Over here," came the reply, in Charlie's normal speaking voice. "Come in. Mind the steps."

  By the light of the street behind him, Jack could just make out a wide flight of steps, and he followed them down until his trainers made squeaking contact with the bare floorboards.

  "Charlie, how about a bit of light?" he asked, in his best casual voice.

  "Sure."

  Whump! A ball of light appeared over the open palm of Charlie's hand. Charlie grinned.

  Jack looked at the glowing fireball, still trying not to boggle too much. Then he looked around himself.

  The light of Charlie's fireball thing showed a space that was surprisingly big, maybe even as big as the butterfly room. To Jack's left, a long chrome bar top spanned about two-thirds of the length of the room, and there was a partitioned-off section of tables and sofas along to his right. Charlie stood in the middle of the wide, largely bare open area that took up most of the room. The whole place stank of stale cigarettes and booze. But what Jack really noticed was the high ceiling, which, in the flickering yellow-orange light of Charlie's fireball, seemed very far away.

  Jack looked back down at Charlie, who was doing something weird — well, even more weird anyway. He was hunched over, his head sticking out forward as if he were sniffing for something. His hands were groping about in the air. The fireball thing hung over him, following him smoothly as he moved.

  "Charlie, what are you—?"

  "Here," said Charlie suddenly, turning to Jack with a huge grin. "Here. Feel."

  Jack shrugged and walked over, his trainers squeaking loudly as he crossed the bare wood of the floor.

  "Put your hand where mine is," said Charlie.

  Jack gave him a sideways look but did as he said, putting his arm out.

  "Can you feel it?" asked Charlie, still grinning wildly.

  Jack felt about a bit. "I can feel... a draft," he said.

  "It's not a draft," said Charlie. "See? If I stand in front of it. Here. Or here. Where could it be coming from?" His smile got even wider. "It's not a draft."

  Jack frowned. It certainly was very odd. There was a cold space in the air, just above waist level, like putting your hand in a fridge. It was a very small and very defined sort of space: if he moved his arm so much as a few centimeters anywhere around it, the sensation vanished. He'd read stories about supposedly haunted houses that had "cold spots." He wondered whether that was anything to do with this.

  "This is it, man," said Charlie, so excited he was practically vibrating. "The Fracture. The gateway to Hell."

  "Mm," said Jack, straightening up and looking at his friend. He took a deep breath. "Listen," he said, "are you sure about this? I mean, really?"

  "I've never been more sure of anything," said Charlie, "in my entire life."

  "But—"

  "I can feel it," said Charlie. His face glowed weirdly in the light of the fireball that was still hanging in the air above him. "In my heart," he said, "in my head — and in my blood." He closed his eyes, sniffed in a great lungful of air, and his eyelids fluttered.

  Jack frowned at him. "Er, right," he said. "But don't you think, you know, that we should maybe call the others?"

  "No," snapped Charlie, his eyes flicking open. "No others."

  The two boys looked at each other.

  "Don't you get it?" asked Charlie, with a smile that was blatantly false. "The others don't want us. They don’t want to do this."

  "But Charlie—"

  "Come on, Jack!" Charlie's voice turned desperate. "There's nothing for us here. Nothing! And what we've got — right? — what we've got is a chance to leave it all behind." He stared at Jack, eyes wide.

  "Come on, man," he repeated. "People never get the chance to do something like this. Not for real. The others had it, but they blew it. We're not going to make the same mistake."

  Jack said nothing.

  "All right?" said Charlie.

  "I guess," said Jack.

  "Cool. Now take a step back. I've got to do something here."

  Jack did as he was told.

  Charlie turned his back on him. He spread his arms, and the ink-black shapes of the tattoo slid down under his skin like they were being poured there.

  Jack watched the tattoo. In seconds, Charlie's skin was a mass of black shapes — twisting, curling and caressing.

  Then the whole room started to hum.

  It was a sound that seemed to come from everywhere. The air in the room seemed to be tightening around Jack like polyethylene. Charlie's outstretched arms began to make strange, jerky coaxing gestures — and an eggshell-thin line of light began to form in the space in the air in front of him.

  It was just a crack at first. But as Charlie jerked and weaved — as if he were a puppet being pulled by invisible strings — the line was widening and filling the room with an unearthly red glow.

  Slowly, carefully, Jack eased his phone out of his jeans pocket.

  Not taking his eyes off Charlie, he pressed the buttons that would bring up and dial the number he wanted.

  After three long rings, Raymond answered. "Yeah?"

  His voice sounded tiny and far away.

  "It's Jack," whispered Jack.

  "Hello?" said the big man. "Who's there?"

  "It's Jack."

  "Jack? I can't—"

  "I'm at the Fracture," said Jack. "Charlie's— hkh—"

  And a blow struck all the air out of his body, immediately followed by a stunning impact from behind that almost made him black out.

  When his vision cleared, he was staring into Charlie's face, down Charlie's arm. Charlie's hand was locked round his throat.

  Charlie's eyes were full of blood. His face was like a mask: the black shapes of the tattoo seethed and boiled under his skin, wriggling like eels. The corners of his mouth lifted in a strange grin, before the mouth opened, and a horrible voice said:

  "No, no, no. That's quite out of the question, I'm afraid."

  Jack forced himself to look down, away from the eyes, and saw (past his own dangling feet) that he was now some distance off the ground, pinned to the wall over the bar, on the other side of the room where he had been standing before. He guessed Charlie must have grabbed him and just flow through the air with him until they'd hit the nearest wall. He looked back up at Charlie as, slowly, Charlie's head tipped to one side. The burning blood-filled eyes glanced at the phone in Jack's hand—

  —and I tore from his grasp, shattering somewhere out of sight.

  Silhouetted against the low, red glow of the Fracture, Charlie's face turned sad.

  "You called them, Jack," he said, in his own voice — slowly, as if he couldn't believe what he was saying. "Why would you do that? Why would you... betray me like that?"

  Jack said nothing. It was hard to speak when someone had you by the throat. He grabbed Charlie's arm with both his hands, but he might as well have been squeezing an iron bar. The grip tightened, cutting off Jack's breath, and in another second Jack's vision was closing in: great swaths of velvety black were swishing in from all around, surrounding Charlie's face until it was all that he could see.

  He was losing consciousness, he realized.

  Charlie was strangling him.

  Jack felt a pressure on the inside of
his skull, a squeezing in his heart, a tearing, thickening, swelling in his blood as it pounded in his ears — and he suddenly felt very stupid indeed. Now, at last, it was obvious: Everything, from meeting Nick for the first time, all the way up until this moment, had been nothing more than a trick. Nick hadn't passed on any powers to Charlie: he'd passed on the Scourge. It was Charlie who was the Scourge's host body. It was Charlie who'd been harboring the demon inside him all this time. And though Jack had known there was something wrong with Charlie all along, he'd done and said nothing. He'd been so stupid! Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid—

  WHAM!

  He glimpsed something slam into the side of Charlie's head.

  The grip on his throat was suddenly released.

  And Jack fell to the ground, hard.

  He sat there in a crumpled heap, gasping for air.

  "Esme," he heard Charlie say, surprised.

  "Yeah," said Esme, and her amber eyes flashed fiercely. "Me."

  Jack looked up. Esme was standing off to his right, on the steps that led down from the pub's entrance: Jack had never been so glad to se anyone in his life. Opposite her, to Jack's left, on another flight of wide steps that were the mirror image of the first, stood Charlie. Across some twenty yards of bare, polished floorboards, Charlie and Esme faced each other.

  "I should have known about you," said Esme quietly. Her hands hung loosely at her sides. She shifted her weight from one trainered foot to the other slowly. "I should've spotted you from the start."

  "Oh, yeah?" said Charlie. "And why'd that?"

  "It's all come pretty easy for you, hasn't it?" said Esme. "Didn't it ever occur to you to wonder why?"

  "What are you talking about?

  Esme shook her head, smiling.

  "You're nothing more than an accident, Charlie," she said. "The wrong person, in the wrong place, at the wrong time." She leaned forward a little, staring at him hard to push home every word. "The Scourge needed a puppet. Someone who was easy to push around. You — with your little tantrums — fit the bill perfectly. That's why you were chosen, Charlie. Not for any other reason. And certainly not — God forbid — because you had any talent."